Publishers Weekly
10/24/2022
At the start of this uneven standalone from bestseller Grippando (the Jack Swyteck series), Kate Gamble, an American University law student and would-be playwright, arrives at her parents’ penthouse apartment in Tysons Corner, Va., to find that her mother, Elizabeth, apparently just jumped to her death from its balcony. A note Elizabeth left behind apologizes to her husband and adds that she “did it for Kate.” Seeking to move on with her life, Kate accepts an internship at her father’s company, Buck Technologies International, a private data-integration firm serving “virtually every counterterrorism organization in the Western World”; she also works on a play about how IBM enabled the Nazis to use data from punch cards to track down Jews. Kate stumbles upon a secret at Buck Technologies that threatens the life of an employee she used to babysit for and places her in an awkward position when the Justice Department conducts a security audit of the company, headed by an old boyfriend. Thoughtful and plausible speculations about how big tech could become even more intrusive and a sympathetic, capable heroine make up only in part for plot contrivances and formulaic action sequences. Grippando’s execution falls short of his ambitions. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (Jan.}
From the Publisher
"Expect combustion of all sorts from the New York Times bestselling Grippando." — Library Journal
“Chilling . . . Grippando leads Twenty through a complex plot that maintains its sense of realism until the surprising finale.” — South Florida Sun Sentinel on Twenty
"There’s a reason that James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. . . . Twenty certainly works well as a stand-alone title, but it also will inspire readers to delve into Grippando’s backlist, so be prepared." — Book Reporter on Twenty
"What begins as a thriller and then moves into a legal novel, devolves into a full-blown espionage story that calls to mind the work of Brad Thor, among others . . . When the significance of the number twenty is finally revealed it will send chills down your spine and you will soon realize that this is unlike any other Jack Swyteck novel to date." — CriminalElement.com on Twenty
“Twenty is an excellent legal thriller by an experienced hand at storytelling . . . It’s still only January, but it looks as though James Grippando may have offered us one of the best thrillers of 2021.” — New York Journal of Books on Twenty
“James Grippando's taut and briskly paced story grips the reader from the opening chapter and then keeps them close as Jack Swyteck and his associates race to uncover the forces bent on keeping the truth of the tragedy hidden. Twenty is a highly addictive novel and it is impossible to put down." — Mystery Scene on Twenty
“A Pandora’s box of demons. . . . High-stakes espionage, family drama, double crosses, noble gestures . . . it’s all here.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Grippando masterfully weaves the various plot threads together, revealing unexpected connections . . . this is an ambitious thriller that asks the reader to follow a complex story and delivers a deeply satisfying conclusion. Grippando’s biggest strength has always been his ability to create characters who feel as real as people we might meet on the street. . . . CODE 6 features some of Grippando's most compelling characters and one of his most intriguing stories.” — Booklist
James Grippando . . . proves why he is one of the best thriller writers out there with the release of his latest stand-alone novel, CODE 6. . . . What really drives this book are the characters—fully fleshed-out, real and complex—and you cannot help but root for Kate every step of the way right up until the stunning conclusion. — Bookreporter.com
Book Reporter on Twenty
"There’s a reason that James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. . . . Twenty certainly works well as a stand-alone title, but it also will inspire readers to delve into Grippando’s backlist, so be prepared."
CriminalElement.com on Twenty
"What begins as a thriller and then moves into a legal novel, devolves into a full-blown espionage story that calls to mind the work of Brad Thor, among others . . . When the significance of the number twenty is finally revealed it will send chills down your spine and you will soon realize that this is unlike any other Jack Swyteck novel to date."
South Florida Sun Sentinel on Twenty
Chilling . . . Grippando leads Twenty through a complex plot that maintains its sense of realism until the surprising finale.
Mystery Scene on Twenty
James Grippando's taut and briskly paced story grips the reader from the opening chapter and then keeps them close as Jack Swyteck and his associates race to uncover the forces bent on keeping the truth of the tragedy hidden. Twenty is a highly addictive novel and it is impossible to put down."
New York Journal of Books
Twenty is an excellent legal thriller by an experienced hand at storytelling . . . It’s still only January, but it looks as though James Grippando may have offered us one of the best thrillers of 2021.
CriminalElement.com
"What begins as a thriller and then moves into a legal novel, devolves into a full-blown espionage story that calls to mind the work of Brad Thor, among others . . . When the significance of the number twenty is finally revealed it will send chills down your spine and you will soon realize that this is unlike any other Jack Swyteck novel to date."
Mystery Scene
James Grippando's taut and briskly paced story grips the reader from the opening chapter and then keeps them close as Jack Swyteck and his associates race to uncover the forces bent on keeping the truth of the tragedy hidden. Twenty is a highly addictive novel and it is impossible to put down."
Book Reporter
"There’s a reason that James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. . . . Twenty certainly works well as a stand-alone title, but it also will inspire readers to delve into Grippando’s backlist, so be prepared."
South Florida Sun Sentinel
Chilling . . . Grippando leads Twenty through a complex plot that maintains its sense of realism until the surprising finale.
Kirkus Reviews
2022-10-12
An aspiring playwright’s plan to base her first production on the secrets kept by her father’s powerful IT firm unleashes a Pandora’s box of demons.
Buck Technologies International counts among its clients the Pentagon and the CIA. Kate Gamble, the daughter of CEO Christian Gamble, knows a little and suspects more about the legacy of its surveillance technology. Still grieving the suicide two years ago of her alcoholic mother, Elizabeth, she takes time from her studies in law school to draft a play about the history of Hollerith machines, primitive computers first deployed in the 1890 U.S. census and used by the Third Reich to track information about its Jewish residents and keep the concentration camps running in good order. While she’s hunkering down to the first of many rewrites demanded by Broadway director Irving Bass, who’s interested in the material despite its historical sprawl, more disturbing developments await her extended family. Kate’s ex Noah Dunn, a senior cybercrimes prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., expresses renewed interest in Christian Gamble’s relationship with Sandra Levy, a “trusted advisor” who’s doing time for corporate espionage. And the Chinese government, which paid Levy and her highly placed accomplice for Buck Technologies secrets they didn’t deliver, plucks Patrick Battle, an up-and-coming Buck employee Kate used to babysit, from a corporate survival exercise in Colombia and uses him as a hostage to extort the particulars of Code 6, an undetectable data scraping tool, from Christian Gamble and Jeremy Peel, the chairman of the board who’s trying to push him out and take his place. None of these 12-cylinder adventures do justice to the paranoid premise.
High-stakes espionage, family drama, double crosses, noble gestures: For better or worse, it’s all here.
